From Proto-Finnic*kuningas, borrowed from Proto-Germanic*kuningaz. As Finnish seems to be a very conservative language (i.e., it usually retains the basic structure of the language it had borrowed from), the Finnish word very nearly preserved the nominative singular case maker reconstructed for Proto-Germanic masculine a-stems. Furthermore, the *-az ending corresponds exactly to the *-os ending reconstructable for Proto-Indo-European masculine o-stems, as PIE short a and o fell together in Germanic and Verner's law voices /s/ in this position.